New Fighter: The Kung Fu Vs. Karate Champ Coming To Arcades 2018

UPDATE: The game was delayed until early 2020, where it did release worldwide in January of the year.

We all understand just how important 1v1 fighters have been to arcades over the years but for a long time now, their prominence has been lost among the industry due to home console ports of the same game stealing arcade editions’ thunder with more content and features. That and the controls can easily be replicated at home.

Earlier this year, a new kit system was announced for arcades that aims to revitalize the business by bringing more content to locations without the need of an online revenue share system – the Exa board by Exa-Arcadia. Most of the content announced for it up to this point has fallen under the shoot ’em up genre but the company stated that various other genres would find their way to the platform.

Today, one of those different genres was announced with The Kung Fu Vs. Karate Champ, the 4th game planned for a release on the Exa platform. This is based upon a highly rated PC fighting game released to Early Access in 2016 by the name of Shaolin Vs. Wutang (link is to the Steam page). It is still in the Early Access stage, thus meaning it is a WIP but with this announcement, perhaps that is ending soon. Here’s the announcement tweet of the arcade version with embedded video; if that video doesn’t work, Arcade Belgium posted it to YouTube.

https://twitter.com/exaarcadia/status/989405869325500416

From the Steam description of Shaolin Vs. Wutang, it is described as thus:

Shaolin vs Wutang is a INDIE love letter to Martial Arts and classic Kung Fu films. Made for casual game fans not intended for Hardcore Fighting Game players.

Also by what I’ve seen, it seems to be more Virtua Fighter than Street Fighter (no projectile/magical attacks, more towards realistic fighting). At this moment is unclear exactly how the arcade version will differ from the home edition but do note that Exa does require that any console port to their hardware has content and/or features that are exclusive to their version. For The Kung Fu Vs. Karate Champ, this could mean unique characters, stages, etc. Or it could mean that the game will be changed to cater a little more towards the hardcore crowd.

Either way, I imagine that Virtua Fighter fans might be pleased with this one 😉

We’ll update you on the information behind this one as it becomes available. What do you think about it from what we know so far?